When Things Explode
by Animegirl1129
Summary: The building shakes with the force of the explosion, and Spinelli finds himself on the ground, knocked to his knees with the sheer force of it.


When Things Explode

_**Written for suerum in response to hcbingo prompt: explosions. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.**_

* * *

Spinelli is diligently working on his most recent PI assignment concerning the darkly demented Heather Weber when the streetlight outside of the building flickers out all of a sudden. This is decidedly odd and it has never happened before so he gets to his feet, compelled to investigate.

Nothing is visible, at least not easily. Just shadows and darkness and the alley between this building and the next but he swears he sees something - someone, come on, Spinelli, don't be ridiculous - dart across the mouth of the alleyway, but it's gone in a second. Gone as quickly as it appeared, which is so hastily that he's not actually convinced he saw anything at all.

He goes to check things out anyway - he'd be an awful PI if he didn't look into any potentially strange happenings around his own office - and he makes it to the stairs before all hell breaks loose.

First, there's this weird little half-second of a shock wave that shakes everything. The building vibrates with the sheer force of it. Windows rattle in their frames, glass blows out as the bright light flares to full force. The flames spark to life nearly immediately in the wake of what was apparently an impressive explosion.

Spinelli, thrown completely off by the unexpected event, finds himself on the ground, knocked to his knees with the sheer force of the blow-out.

Things fall: pictures, articles that had been hung on the walls now hit the floor and shatter everywhere. His computer rocks its way off of his desk and the bookcase by the door caves and tilts to block his only exit (at least excepting the windows which are too high to easily escape from).

The heat is overwhelming, and the darkness only makes the situation worse. His vision swims as a result of the blinding bright light that came with the boom-flash, and the ringing in his ears adds to the confusion of his senses. And the smoke, so awful. The smoke chokes him, making him cough and gag on hot air and ash, unable to catch his breath. He's sweating, roasting, his clothes clinging to his skin.

Sirens outside, he thinks. Sounds are distorted and hushed, like he's under water. Sirens maybe, but for all he knows, just more explosions.

"Somebody help!" He's shouting, voice rough and hoarse. He doesn't know how loud he's shouting, can't tell over his ringing ears and the various sounds of the building as it reacts to the explosion. He shouts and shouts, even though he knows no one was around in the building before. Even though no one can hear him, of that he's almost positive. "Help me!" He's tugging at the bookcase, but it's too heavy, and it's sparking with flames, now, too.

His eyes water, he swears it's from the smoke, and he wonders if anyone will get to him in time.

Spinelli stays low in the room, trying to stay under the smoke (an impossible task given that it's just everywhere, really. And where there's not smoke, there's fire instead, or glass, or bits of other broken things).

Something else is in his eyes now, but it's too dark to know just what that is. Hot, sticky, thick. Pain when he follows the liquid trail up to his head, a cut but he doesn't know how or when he got it in all the chaos. Slivers of glass in his palms. Blood, he's forced to assume.

He curls up in the corner, pulling his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose in fruitless attempts to filter the air he's attempting to breathe. Waiting, waiting for something, anything.

It feels like days, hours since the loud crash-boom of the explosion, but it's probably only been minutes, really. And that's when it happens. That's when the door shifts, just a little, against the broken down bookcase, and shouts, muffled as they are, accompany more shoving and pushing and finally the bits of splintered, smoking wood is pushed aside.

"Spinelli!" A frantic voice calls out, even if it is probably one of the last voices Spinelli would have expected to hear coming to his rescue.

It's Jason. Jason who he's barely seen in months. Jason who hasn't noticed anything about his former roommate's presently meager state of existence (living in the PI Office as he's been doing, having alienated Maxie) and who hasn't responded to any of Spinelli's attempts at communication following the loss of Jason's son. He'd been starting to wonder if Jason had written him off entirely, stopped caring altogether, but this - right now - is telling a different story because he apparently cared enough to come barging into a burning building.

* * *

Jason is on his way back to the Penthouse after a few drinks at the bar. He's been drinking because he can't sleep, not with all of the ghosts he has at home. Not when no one else is there - it's so empty there now.

He's so empty.

He's lost everyone.

He's lost his family, the good and the bad - Emily, Lila, Alan, AJ. Doesn't talk much with the ones he has left in the Quartermaine clan. He's lost so many people he's loved - Robin, Courtney, Elizabeth (still alive, but not in his life, not like how she used to be), Carly (moving on with her life, not needing he or Sonny anymore and proudly pulling her kids out of the life along with her) and now he's losing Sam, too. He's probably already lost her, really, probably to McBain. He's lost Jake, he's lost Sam's daughter and now Sam's son, too. A child he would have loved like his own, even if it took him too long to realize that. But he's gone. Just like everyone else. In one way or another, they're all gone and sometimes he thinks it's a good thing that he loses everyone, that maybe he deserves it for the life he's lead. But he can't think that when innocents pay for that life with their own.

So, he walks alone thought the dark streets of Port Charles, back to the ghosts that wait for him in the Penthouse.

His trek home takes him past the PI Office, but he doesn't give that much of a thought at all, barely registers what the building is as he passes it.

But, he's forced to notice it when the pressure wave catches him. The flash-bang that follows tells him all he needs to know - a bomb, couldn't be anything else, really, not with a blast like that.

He catches himself on the brick wall of a building near the center of a the blast, keeps himself from going down and that's when it hits him.

Spinelli.

Spinelli's office.

Spurred into action at the thought of his once roommate trapped inside (even though Jason has no reason to think he might be there (and he knows Sam isn't because she tends to be wherever McBain is as of late)), he rushes toward the building.

He dodges inside, avoiding the flames licking at the door frame and sidestepping the little fires burning out on the floors. "Careful," he mumbles to himself, moving to shift around a particularly jumpy bit of fire. There are other offices here, but given the late hour Jason figures there's a low likelihood that they'd be occupied so he's focused entirely on Spinelli's office, which is, of course, not on the ground floor.

Headed for the stairs (unstable as they probably are given whatever structural damage the bomb has likely caused), he slowly climbs them, maneuvering carefully through the hallway on the third floor to where the office is located.

"Spinelli!" He calls out, as loud as he can. The smoke is thick here, just as it has been all throughout the building, and it's starting to get to him now, make him cough. He moves to open the office door, but hits unexpected resistance. "Spinelli!" He shouts again, this time putting more weight behind his attempts to open the door.

Finally, it gives and falls open, the remnants of some piece of furniture skidding away from the door.

And there's Spinelli.

He's barely visible in the darkness, only lit by the specks of fire in the room, but he's there and he's awake, which jason is counting as a good thing because he's not sure he can take losing anyone else right now.

"Spinelli," he says again, crossing the room to check on him, relief evident in his voice even though they are far from out of danger. "Are you okay?"

Coughing makes up the majority of the response he gets. Spinelli makes attempts at words, but he fails at getting them out so Jason opts for action instead, pulling the hacker to his feet and moving him toward the door.

"Come on, we'll get out of here, alright?" He manages through his own smoke-induced coughing fit. Back down the hall, back down the stairs. Slow and careful - they certainly don't need any complications now, not when Jason is starting to hear creaking and cracking noises overhead. "Faster," Jason prompts, one hand curling into Spinelli's t-shirt to haul him along faster. The kid stumbles, lands weird on his ankle, but gets up and follows all the same. Sirens are approaching when they're almost out, audible over the building, quite engulfed in flames now, and something falls over the stairs just as they get outside.

The fresh air hits them both hard, Jason keeping one hand on Spinelli to keep him upright as they both try to get clean air into their lungs. Coughing, so much coughing.

The sirens are getting closer and Jason knows that within moments they're going to have police officers, firemen and paramedics on scene. Asking questions and pushing a trip to the ER. He briefly contemplates getting them both out of there before that can start, but Spinelli's persistent coughing and the blood he can see on the younger man's head make him think that that might not be a good idea.

"T-thanks," Spinelli manages to wheeze out at him though a new coughing fit. He's doubled over with his hands on his knees, blood dripping to pool on the cement at his feet. Jason isn't even sure he's noticed. Spinelli stands up straighter then, leaving bloody handprints on his jeans, too. Yeah, definitely needs to go to the hospital.

The fire truck's show up first and set to work. Luckily the ambulance is the next to arrive, and Jason manages to get Spinelli inside of one before the police can start pestering them, asking things they don't have answers for. He even manages a ride along with Spinelli, even though he has no intention of getting checked out himself.

The ER is relatively quiet for a Friday night, and there are plenty of doctors and nurses available to deal with Spinelli. When Jason refuses treatment, they send him off to the waiting area and set to work on their compliant patient. Jason walks away with an assurance to Spinelli that he'll be there when they let him back.

He spends a good hour and a half loitering in the waiting area, watching a sparse handful of people go through triage and get taken back for examination. Each time the doors open and someone comes out, he hopes it's Spinelli - while simultaneously dreading a doctor bearing bad news. He calls Max for a ride home for he and Spinelli, gets a call from the police - they assure Jason that they'll be by in the morning to question he and Spinelli concerning their involvement in the explosion, even though Jason insists they have none, and goes back to waiting.

Finally, two hours and fifteen minutes after their arrival, Spinelli appears. A nurse is wheeling him out, meeting Jason off to the side of the doors to rattle off instructions and give him a couple of prescriptions along with discharge paperwork. "He's got a sprained ankle, we've bandaged the cuts on his hands and stitched up the one on his head. He has a mild case of smoke inhalation. You probably do, too. You'll both probably have sore throats, coughing, congestion, and headaches - if anything gets too bad, come back in to get looked over. Try to avoid any irritants and try to keep him from talking too much."

"Thanks," Jason says, taking control of the wheelchair. "I'll keep an eye on him."

The nurse nods and walks away, leaving Jason and Spinelli to make their departure.

Max is already waiting outside and Jason helps Spinelli into the car once they get as far as the curb. He slides in next to the hacker after returning the wheelchair and then they're on their way.

"Stone Cold," Spinelli manages, voice sounding rough and gravelly and like he's been gargling with rocks. "You don't have to... the Penthouse, if you don't want me there."

"I want you there," he says, cutting off any further protest. He's honestly not sure where Spinelli's been staying, though he vaguely recalls hearing that Maxie kicked him out a while back, but he's pretty sure it might've been at the offices. And that means he doesn't have anywhere to go. "Sam... Sam's not staying there anymore. And, ugh, it's kind of empty now. It hasn't been empty in a while. So if you want to stay." It's not easy for him to say, but his roundabout way seems to work well enough because Spinelli nods in agreement. Maybe he'll even keep the ghosts from taking over the place. "Good," he says. "That's good."

* * *

The ride back to the Penthouse is quiet, almost eerily so. Quiet is not something that Jason usually associates with Spinelli at all and it shows in the looks the older man keeps shooting him. Even Max isn't talking, though Jason does explains the bare minimum of what went down for him. By the time they get back to the Penthouse, Spinelli is more than ready to get out of the car, feeling suffocated and trapped in the awkward, strained silence - but then he's almost afraid to go back into the Penthouse, too because there are so many mixed feelings there and he's not sure he can deal with that right now on top of everything else.

"If you wanna take a shower and clean up, feel free," Jason tells him, once they're inside. He even offers Spinelli clothes to wear in place of the scrubs the hospital sent him off in, which replaced of the bloody soot covered clothing he'd had on in the fire. The smell of fire and ash and smoke still clings to both of them, though, and it probably will for a while.

Spinelli nods and heads to do that, accepting the clothes with a frown because he's only just remembered that all of his stuff (most of it, at least) was at the office and the office has probably burned to the ground by now.

The shower proves difficult, as well, given his wounds. He's sore, too. In an all-over, bone deep way that makes his moves sluggish and uncoordinated. He goes as quickly as he can (which isn't very quickly at all) so that Jason can have a turn, ignoring how relaxing the water feels on his aching muscles and just how exhausted he is.

By the time he's out and changed into clothes that are way too big on his smaller frame, he feels like he's barely awake. He stumbles out to the living room and Jason ducks into the bathroom for his own shower, leaving Spinelli alone to wonder what he's supposed to do now. He doesn't have anyone, anyplace to go now.

Maybe he should go back to Oakfield. He misses his Granny and he's sure that she misses him, too. Maybe that would be best. No one in Port Charles seems to care where he is or what he's doing so why should he stay? He... he just doesn't fit here anymore. There's nothing left for him.

He tries to sleep, curled up on the couch, but despite how tired he is, he can't seem to stop thinking. And so that's how Jason finds him when he returns, showered and changed, to the living room.

"You don't have to sleep out here, you know," Jason tells him. "The pink room is still all yours. Whatever you left here is still in there."

This is something he did not anticipate. He half-expected that Jason and Sam would use his moving out as a reason to paint the room, maybe turn it into a nursery for the baby. But apparently, they didn't do that. Apparently they didn't do anything to it at all. He certainly didn't know he still had this island of familiarity in the ocean of chaos that his life presently is.

Jason helps him upstairs, down the hall. The walls are still pink, his bed is still there, his furniture. Even some of the clothes he never came back for. That, at least, is good news. Wearing Jason's clothes makes him feel small and clumsy. There's even an older laptop left, tucked into his closet somewhere.

"Get some sleep, okay?" Jason suggests. "We'll talk in the morning. If you're up to it."

Spinelli nods and sits on his bed, reveling in the feel of the familiar surroundings, even if it's been a while. Jason flips the lights out for him and ducks out of the room. Surprisingly, he finds himself soundly asleep within moments.

* * *

Jason can't sleep.

There's something so weird at having Spinelli back in the Penthouse. Not bad weird, far from it. It's comforting in a way, having him back. And, yeah, Spinelli was the one who left but that doesn't make Jason any less at fault for how little he's seen, spoken to, or thought about him in the time since then. And Spinelli seems different, too. Kind of broken and he's not sure the explosion is entirely to blame for that.

For once he's not thinking about the ghosts from his past but that's only because he's a little too focused on making sure Spinelli's doesn't become one of them.

Yet, fall asleep he does, without even being aware of it and, when the sun finally starts sending its first intrusive and insistent rays of morning light into his bedroom, Jason wakes with a slow yawning groan of protest. Every part of his body aches and if it's that bad for him, he can't envision what Spinelli feels like having borne the brunt of the explosion.

He drags himself out of bed, walking slowly with exaggerated care (which gives him an unwelcome flash of what it might be like for him if he lives long enough to become the grumpy old codger he's destined to be) out of his room and down into the living room. He is surprised and somewhat disturbed to find Spinelli sitting on the sofa, hunched over his left behind laptop, His shoulders are rounded, curled into a defensive posture which Jason remembers being common to the younger version of his roommate when he first came to live with him and again he feels a flash of worry for Spinelli's emotional state. Though Spinelli's typing is slower than usual given the wounds on his hands, Jason catches sight of jumbled computer code, but also spots things like 'real estate' and 'Oakfield' and that's more than enough to compound that worry into a very real problem.

"You're going back? To Tennessee?" Jason asks, hoping that the alarm isn't overly evident in his voice. His words startle Spinelli, making him jump and slam the laptop shut in surprise and he spins around to face Jason. "Sorry. I saw... why?"

Spinelli frowns and avoids eye contact, even when Jason moves to sit beside him on the sofa. "Why not?" Is his somewhat childish response. "It's not like I have a reason to stay. The PI Office is gone, Maxie and I aren't getting back together, I don't have a place to stay."

Jason sighs, not happy that his suspicion has proven true. "You were living there, weren't you?" Jason asks, even though he already knows the answer. "At the office, I mean."

Spinelli flushes, embarrassed, Jason would have to guess. "Yes, Stone Cold," he answers, voice still hoarse. "Since the not so fair Maximista expelled me from her apartment."

He can't believe that he let things get this bad between them because everything he wants to say in response to all of this he can't because it's mostly his own fault. "I... I know that we haven't been talking much lately, that I haven't... been very involved in your life since you moved out, but you could've come back," Jason says, hoping that this doesn't go over too badly. "Or if you didn't want to stay here, I would've helped you find something." he can tell by the time he finishes the sentence that it's not going to be that easy, though.

Spinelli's frowning down at the floor, fingers picking idly at the edges of the bandage. "I tried. Not... not about that," he says, "but I did try to contact you. I tried to contact you after, well, after what happened with Sam and the baby, to see if you were okay." None of those messages had been returned, but he's not entirely sure he can blame Jason for that one. "And I called you once about backing me up for a PI job, too, Stone Cold, because Heather Weber is quite frankly an extremely portentous individual." He retreats to the kitchen, in need of water for his sore throat, gulping down a generous amount before continuing, turning to face Jason again, since he followed him in. "And I couldn't bring myself to risk returning to a location where I questioned my welcome, no matter how much of a home it had been previously."

He has no idea how to respond to that because it's true. He remembers the voicemails Spinelli left about the baby, but he hadn't been up to answering any phone calls right then. The PI call came in the midst of his trip to New Orleans, but he still should have answered - he certainly doesn't want Spinelli anywhere near Heather Weber, crazy lunatic that she is. "I'm sorry," that's all he can say and he knows that's not enough either. "I'm sorry I let this happen and I'm sorry I haven't been there and I don't want you to go back to Oakfield." Spinelli looks like he's going to cut in, then, but Jason decides that he needs to keep talking so Spinelli can't outright refuse just yet. "I lose everyone, Spinelli," the younger man knows more than enough about his past to prevent him from having to list off examples, so Jason plows on, struggling to find words and pacing the length of the kitchen, "The only person who's still around is Sonny and that's... that's not what I want." He shakes his head, can't even imagine a life where all he has is Sonny (even though that's pretty much what he's down to now)." I didn't want you to leave in the first place - I thought you wanted to, so I didn't stop you and... and there aren't any excuses for after that, but I want you to come back, move back in." He stops then, stops his stupid caged-animal pacing and looks dead on at Spinelli because this? This he needs to understand because Jason's pretty sure he doesn't get this part yet. "I'm sick of losing people I care about and I will do whatever I have to in order to convince you to stay."

Spinelli doesn't have anything to say to that, probably mostly because he's never heard Jason say so much at one time before, but his silence puts Jason on edge.

"So, will you give me another chance and stay?" He pushes, anxious for an answer. "Even if it's just long enough to find whoever planted the bomb-" he has hardly forgotten about that, he even has a pretty solid suspect in mind now that he knows Spinelli was investigating Heather "-or, or if you really want to leave, at least stay until everything's set up. Give me the chance, even though I certainly don't deserve it from you."

"I'll stay," Spinelli agrees, voice sounding surprisingly resolute despite his hesitation.

Jason knows that he's lucky to get that answer, that he probably wouldn't if he were talking to anyone besides Spinelli. After his numerous mess ups, after everything he's done: cutting Spinelli out of his life, letting him move out, not noticing that he was struggling, ignoring his attempts at contact - after all of that, Spinelli's still willing to try.

After all of that. He belatedly realizes that he never included Spinelli amongst his countless ghosts, in the memories that have been haunting him. All of those people, he really has lost them, but, maybe, just maybe, he hasn't lost Spinelli.


End file.
